The Real Cost of Your Free Music

“Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!”
– David Lowery

Emily White wrote a post on the NPR blog where she matter-of-factly states that she has 11,000 songs in her music library, yet has only ever purchased 15 CD’s. Her music came from swapping with friends, file-sharing, and ripping the music from the hundreds of albums at the college radio station where she was a DJ. In her own words “As monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I’ve never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and T-shirts.”

Free Culture, aka free music, right? Not according to David Lowery of The Trichordist. His open reply to Emily is so succulent and informative, that it should be mandatory reading for anyone who believes they are saving a few dollars by ripping or downloading someone else’s music.

David’s blog post Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered has as of 6-20-12 received over a half million visits. The post already has over 553 comments. Clearly, this is something that strikes a chord (sorry, pun intended) with many of us.

I invite you to read both Emily White’s post as well as David Lowery’s reply. Regardless of who you think is right, I think you’ll learn a few things about the music industry that you hadn’t fully considered.

Here at The Fat Dollar, saving money is a core concept. However, saving money by depriving someone of well-earned income is not part of our philosophy. It’s not fun to cause pain to someone else. And saving money while having fun, well you guessed it – that’s The Fat Dollar way.